Table Of ContentGREEK ROMAN * AND * BYZANTINE
*
SCHOLARLY * AIDS
The series of SCHOLARLY AIDS is published by the Editors of GREEK,
ROMAN AND BYZANTINE STUDIES as supplements to the quarterly
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AND BYZANTINE MONOGRAPHS still in print, see the inside back cover.
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CONVENTIONS IN EDITING
A Suggested Reformulation of the
Leiden System
STERLING DOW
Hudson Professor of Archaeology
Harvard University
GREEK ROMAN ' AND ' BYZANTINE
*
SCHOLARLY ' AIDS ' NUMBER 2
DUKE UNIVERSITY
1969
The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation has
generously provided a grant of funds in support
of the publication of this Scholarly Aid.
Made and printed in Great Britain by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles
Dedicated to
Jeanne and Louis Robert
in admiration for other things and because
they have done most for good editorial usage
CONTENTS
Foreword vi
I INTRODUCTION i
Apologia i
General Definition of Objectives 2
II CONVENTIONS 3
Above and Below the Preserved Text 3
Numbering of Lines 3
The Use of Editorial Signs 5
[καί] Restorations (see also IV infra) 5
[...], [------] Lacunae 5
m, Spaces Left Blank by the Letterer 6
καί Doubtful Readings 6
llllll Attrition 7
[[καί]] Rasurae 7
1TEON Reading Clear, Interpretation Unknown 9
Strokes Clear, Letters Unknown 10
καί Parts Read Earlier, Now Missing 10
< > Additions by the Editor 11
( ) Substitutions by the Editor 11
< > Letters Left Incomplete by the Letterer 11
{ } Suppressions by the Editor 11
( ) Resolutions of Abbreviations and Ligatures 12
Note on Pointed Brackets 12
Editing of Earlier Modern Copies 12
The Problems of Editing 13
CONTENTS
III BIBLIOGRAPHY 14
Earlier Systems 14
The Leiden System 14
Official Publication 14
Summaries of the Leiden System for the User 15
Discussions of the Leiden System 16
The Wingspread Convention 17
IV RESTORATION IN EPIGRAPHICAL TEXTS 20
The Nature and Magnitude of the Problem 20
The Two Extreme Conceptions 21
The Kirchner Principle 21
The Principle of Extreme Freedom 22
Difficulties with the Principle of Extreme Freedom 23
Examples of Free Restoration 24
The Factors Involved in Restoration 25
A Further Example 26
Various Essential Considerations 27
A Suggested Solution 29
Proposed Rules 3°
V ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE: Epheboi in Neronian
Athens (IG II2 1989) 32
Previous Study, Provenience, Description 32
New Text 34
Plate facing 34
Commentary 34
The Inscription as a Whole 37
Foreword
Experience has shown that organizational formulations easily result in un
satisfactory compromises, obscurities, and omissions. Doubtless one person, act
ing alone, is no less liable to error, but he can at least try to satisfy that one
person’s notions, such as they may be, of thoroughness and clarity. In much of
what follows, the expression is unavoidably dogmatic, but like the Leiden pro
posals, everything is recommendations, not laws; whatever authority inheres in
the recommendations must derive from inherent reasonableness, if there is any,
and from reasonableness alone. Or rather, since we are after all in the realm of
convention, where ultimately it is usage which alone matters, and alone estab
lishes law, I have understood “reasonable” to mean “reasonable in the light of
present practice.”
For better or worse, I have sought no official backing. L. Robert and Z.
Stewart have read the whole with discernment, but I wish not to involve them
or any other person. E. L. Bennett Jr, H. Bloch, J. Chadwick, W. V. Clausen,
K. M. Clinton, DeC. Fales Jr, E. W. Handley, J. H. Kroll, P. L. MacKendrick,
G. Nagy, G. M. Quinn, R. S. Stroud, L. L. Threatte Jr, S. V. Tracy, L. B.
Urdahl and J. C. Waldbaum also have given valuable assistance. If what is con
tained herein leads to useful discussion and agreement, in practice (one would
hope) as well as in theory, and also, if it is needed, in organizational action, I
for one shall be pleased to conform to the eventual decisions. All that matters is
to serve clarity, simplicity, and adequacy—not to gratify any one person’s feel
ings about any particular sign.
Certain limitations of the present effort should be noted. Textual apparatus
is not dealt with. There is nothing here on “style” : my efforts in that direction,
along with those of others in America, are set forth in the American Journal of
Archaeology 69 (1965) 199-206 (with abbreviations). Nor have I attempted to
deal with usages outside the classical sphere, e.g. cuneiform tablets and the like.
The Leiden and other treatments of conventions have usually cited examples
which were fabricated, and which consequently had (it seemed to me) an air of
unreality. I have therefore been at pains, except in a few brief instances, to cite
instances from actual inscriptions in their context. Some of these are from my
own publications: in searching for instances which are perfectly certain, one is
driven to selecting instances which are familiar.
VI
I
INTRODUCTION
Apologia
IN I93I Dos Leydemr Klammer System (full references in the Bibliography
infra) came into being. Papyrologists had taken the lead, and initially at
least representatives of other disciplines were not as fully consulted as would
ideally have been desirable. Nevertheless, during the next decade and a half the
conventions agreed upon at Leiden came to be widely adopted for the editing
of epigraphical and papyrological texts. Any Classically trained scholar who
knows the usages in one of these fields can often interpret correctly, without re
course to tables of sigla and the like, the conventions now used in editing most
of the texts in the other field. But palaeographical texts—the “authors”—con
tinued to be edited somewhat differently, and often differently from one another.
It may suffice to refer to O. Staehlin’s Editionstechnik, 2nd ed. (Teubner, Leipzig
tf)1-!) and P· Maas, Textkritik (Leipzig 1927; later editions, including the Eng
lish translation [Oxford 1958] are wholly unaffected by Leiden).
Several years ago the Leiden1 system was put to a new test. It was urged by
the present writer that the Bronze Age texts from the Aegean area should also
be edited in such a way that, with a minimum of usages necessarily peculiar to
the editing of the Linear B and A tablets (etc.), the diacritical signs should be
intelligible to all Classical scholars. Colleagues learned in these writings willingly
agreed, and the Wingspread Convention {infra, Bibliography) is the Leiden
system re-stated with a few, readily-intelligible additions necessary for the
tablets.
Apparently the Leiden System is here to stay. It has worked—can one not
say ? reasonably well. No large alteration has been or is likely to be proposed.
There is ample evidence, nevertheless, to show that the Leiden system was
not perfect or final. Nearly everyone has his own pet notions, and no one, if he
had to start again at the beginning, would devise a system precisely like that
which has been adopted. In fact several minor changes have been suggested. In
epigraphy there is no agreement in theory or in practice on the proper status of
“restorations” within square brackets. On the use of dots, theory is clear,
practice often delinquent. On several signs used less frequently, there is no clear
statement anywhere, neither is there an up-to-date bibliography of what has
been written about the conventions. Nor does any recent article attempt to
cover the same ground critically. In addition, the latest official formulation,
itself more than thirty years old, of the Leiden system is out of print and
unobtainable. It left much unsaid and some matters unclear.
1 As between Leiden and Leyden in English, there is no decisive consideration except usage,
which favors Leiden.
·+ I
